Testing and Results
Testing heatsinks accurately is a tricky business.
For a review the gain over ambient is the most important, it lets the readers figure out how cooling will run for them with a certain ambient temperature. For example it could be 30*C in a house, and the heatsink has a 20*C delta. So for someone with a 30*C ambient those core temperatures would be 50*C while someone with a 0*C ambient would have 20*C core temperatures.
For this review I will be expressing all temps in the number of degrees over ambient the cores are running (or Delta), if you the viewer add this number to your current ambient air temp the resulting number is how hot my system’s cores would be running in your house during the tests.
For testing I will be using the Xigmatek Prime SD1484 with Arctic Cooling MX-4 thermal paste(in order to give a level playing field for all heatsinks).
The test system is
- Intel Core i5 3770k
- Asus Maximus V Gene
- 8gb Patriot Viper Extreme 1866mhz
- Antec 1200w Power Supply
- Navig Benching Station
- Delta 120mm CFB1212VHW
The 3770K will be run at a mild overclock and a higher overclock:
- 4.1ghz with 1.15v Core
- 4.5GHz with 1.3v Core.
The small overclock is to give at least a small bump in frequencies over stock since it is even possible for a stock intel heatsink to take the heat load of a 3770k with a small overclock.
Results
The results are expressed in degrees above ambient temperature, or Delta.
4.1ghz Testing
Surprisingly the cheaper Night Hawk edition heatsink is beating the more expensive Prime heatsink. This could be due to the fact that the SD1283 uses larger heatpipes which make better contact with the small Die on the 3770k.
Now we kick things up another notch and set the processor at 4.5ghz with 1.3v.In order to test the heatsink itself with a different fan I decided to attach the Delta GFB1212VHW (The Monster). Mind you, this is no normal fan. It is a dual fan, meaning it has two sets of fan blades that spin in different directions to provide crazy amounts of airflow. The result is litterally a wall of air and intense static pressure. Just as a reference, at full blast the stock Xigmatek fan pushes around 90CFM (Cubic feet of air per minute) of air, while the Dual-fan Delta pushes a whopping 220CFM of air.
Overclocked
Using the stock fans the SD1283 slightly pulls ahead of the Prime heatsink. Keep in mind that the SD1283 is also MUCH more noisy at full load. While the Prime does make much noise the SD1283 is in a whole different category of loud.
But in order to see what this heatsink can really do the “monster” fan was added. With the higher CFM fan the Night Hawk fan just completely blew away the stock fan and even the Prime heatsink with the same fan. This is likely due to the larger heatpipes that are used with the SD1283.
Noise Level
Using the stock PWM fan the SD1283 is not too bad except at the highest overclock levels. It can be quite loud since the fan spins up to full speed. With lower overclocks the fan rarely spins to full speed and does not make a large amount of noise. But once the voltage and frequencies are raised a large amount the fan has a tendency to get loud.
